Why George Bush Needs the Axis of Evil
Beyond the obvious psychodrama of Bush attempting to defy his father and the desires of the U.S. electorate for disengagement from Iraq is an attempt to reaffirm the Manichean worldview embodied in the Axis of Evil, especially as it pertains to Iran and Syria.
I don’t doubt that America and Bush are on the way out of Iraq — I don’t think the US military is going to stand for more of the same. When Bush mocks the drawdown timetables being mooted about, he’s really saying, I’m not going to pull out until I can blame the failure in Iraq on the Iraqi government instead of myself.
But Bush hopes to leave with his strategy of isolating and confronting the “Axis of Evil” intact, hoping to go down in the history books as the guy who had the basic idea right, even if he totally botched the execution. You know, good heart, weak brain. Or maybe bad heart, weak brain, big balls. Whatever.
Therefore, the line in the sand as regards the Baker plan is not the issue of troop drawdowns. It is the refusal to engage Iran and Syria in an attempt to restrain insurgent and Shi’ite elements and spare the American military the headache of extracting our troops in the midst of a snowballing insurgency cum civil war.
The whole philosophy behind the Axis of Evil rhetoric was to create conditions of polarization so extreme that escalating tension and open conflict were inevitable, allowing America to play its ultimate trump card of superior military force — while giving the Bush administration the luxury of using the terms of leading a nation at war to define and drive domestic politics, international diplomacy, and the concentration of presidential power.
Of course, a funny thing happened on the way to full spectrum dominance and our transformation of the Middle East: the Iraq quagmire. Instead of allies and electorate falling into line behind a triumphant Bush war machine, the administration found itself in the intensely embarrassing position of the gang that talked the talk but wasn’t able to walk the walk.
The result has been a state of paralysis in American foreign policy as the Bush administration has been unable to advance its confrontational goals, while at the same time unwilling to explore its diplomatic options.
Instead of acting from strength, we’ve been acting out weakness.
Nowhere is this more galling than in the case of Iran, a worrisome power that many nations in the West and Middle East were willing to contain and harass, if not destabilize.
America’s intransigent hostility was intended to stigmatize Iran as the next inevitable victim of the Bush administration, with all avenues to diplomatic engagement (and escape from America’s wrath) successfully foreclosed.
It is therefore both extremely frustrating and an implicit reproach to the Bush administration that not only perfidious Chicoms, rascally Russkies, wussy Europeans, but elements of the Republican power structure and his own dad’s guys are acting as if engagement with Iran is an option.
George W. Bush is certainly seething. I called them Evil, didn’t I? Evil! Didn’t you bozos get the memo!?
That kind of perfidy can mean only one of two things. Either the axis of evil strategy was totally wrongheaded and stupid or...well, let’s try to get out of Iraq without talking to Iran so we can at least pretend the whole A of E thing wasn’t totally wrongheaded and stupid.
Politically, at least, George Bush seems to have an emerging plan for squirming out of the Iraq mess: define the carnage as sectarian strife (instead of civil war), announce we’re backing the Iraqi government (while we’re actually tilting toward the Shi’ites), recast our goals as “training and logistics” (and opt out of the whole counterinsurgency/reconciliation business), and, when things don’t get better, blame the Iraqi government (instead of himself) and bug out.
He might get away with it, even with the regional Sunni community led by Saudi Arabia going apeshit over a de facto endorsement of political violence, ethnic cleansing, and marginalisation of the Iraqi Sunnis. Not to mention turning the central government of Iraq over to Iran’s allies.
The military mainly cares that we’re getting out, and is probably willing to accept, albeit grudgingly, the loss of a thousand or so more killed and wounded as the price of executing a more protracted drawdown amid a political rear-guard action by a delusional and callous Commander in Chief intent only on covering his worthless ass.
Even if the Democrats are smart, stick together, and concentrate singlemindedly on bringing the troops home, they probably will be unable to force the hand of an executive branch obsessed with disengaging from Iraq on its own terms.
Which leaves as the wild card Iran, which could naysay America’s hope of leaving the Shi’ite government holding the bag and instead turn America’s retreat from Iraq into a wholesale rout.
If Iran believes we’re trying to escalate a la McCain and Lieberman, look for some very bad days ahead as they try to convince us there is no future for any kind of US military presence, let alone an expanded one, in Iraq.
If McCain’s proposal is understood as the piece of shameless and irresponsible political grandstanding that it is, things might be different.
Even without diplomacy, Iran may decide that it will cut the US some slack and grease the wheels for us to get our troops out quickly so that its allies in Baghdad can concentrate on crushing the Sunnis and usher in an era of Shi’a dominance of the north shore of the Persian Gulf.
In that case, the only hope George Bush has for outrunning the collapse of our military adventure in Iraq, at least maintaining plausible deniability for the value of his Axis of Evil formulation, and preserving some defendable legacy to be enshrined in the drafty, empty halls of his Presidential Library and peddled to the ignorant and credulous on the ex-presidents’ rubber chicken circuit is for Iran to act...not Evil.
Kind of ironic, isn’t it?
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
